rowing steadily in most parts of the country. Some
of the more recent elections had shown that the reform spirit was
obtaining the mastery in constituencies from which nothing of the kind
had been expected a short time before, and it seemed to most of the
Whig leaders that the existing Parliament was the last bulwark against
the progress of reform. When the time came for the motion to enable
the Bill to get into committee--that is, to be discussed point by point
in all its clauses by the House, with full liberty to every member to
speak as many times as he pleased--General Gascoigne, one of the
representatives of Liverpool, proposed an amendment to the effect that
it was not expedient, at such a time, to reduce the numbers of knights,
citizens, and burgesses constituting the House of Commons, and this
amendment was carried by a majority of eight. Now the carrying of this
amendment could not possibly have been considered as the destruction of
any vital part of the Bill.

[Sidenote: 1831--William the Fourth and Reform]

Lord John Russell had argued for the reduction of the numbers in the
House as a matter of convenience and expediency; but he had not given
it to be understood that the Government felt itself pledged to that
particular proposition, and had made up his mind not to accept any
modification in that part of the plan. The authors of the Reform Bill,
however, read very wisely in the success of General Gascoigne's
amendment the lesson that in the existing Parliament the Tories would
be able to take the conduct of the measure out of the hands of the
Government during its progress through committee, and to mar and
mutilate it, so as to render it entirely unsuited to its original
purposes. Therefore Lord Grey and the other members of his Cabinet
made up their minds that the best course they could take would be to
accept the vote of the House of Commons as a distinct defeat, and to
make an {151} appeal to the decision of the constituencies by an
instant dissolution of Parliament.

One important question had yet to be settled. Would the King give his
assent to the dissolution? No one could have supposed that the King
was really at heart a reformer, and the general conviction was that if
William cared anything at all about the matter his personal inclination
would be in favor of good old Toryism, or that, at the very least, his
inclination would be for allowing things to go on in the old way. At
that time the